9 Surprising Lessons from Our First Unattended Redemption Arcade

On February 28th, 2017, we debuted our first card system at an adolescent inflatable park to test our brand new hardware and software solution.  We had no idea how good the proving ground would be!

From the beginning, we opened with our complete feature offering, an unattended redemption arcade. Cash / Credit at the kiosk.  Kicking our Branded RFID cashless debit player cards. Our card readers or “card swipers” (depending on what part of the country you are from) managing credit and ticket payouts. And finally, our self-checkout redemption machine, Prizezilla. Prizezilla was dispensing sugar like one of the bulk candy stores in the mall.  These kids weren’t saving up for the gift card no way, give me FUN DIP!!

The arcade had 16 games if you include a kiddie ride.  About half of the room was redemption machines. We spent about 2 months on-site, 7 days a week, open to close, observing the customer behavior, engaging them with questions from time to time, tweaking our product to be more intuitive while getting live feedback from all ages.

Here are nine lessons that we learned:

1. Moms really need a break from these 2-7-year-old toddlers. These kids were running wild, and unattended all over the place, while a lot of moms were catching up on their FaceBook and Instagram feeds. Lol. We did pull several out of the Skee Ball cage though.
2. If it looks like a handle, the kids are going to pull on it.  Constantly tugging/punching, pulling, pushing, and prodding.  What a proving ground for the equipment to ensure its toughness.
3. Kids just get technology. I can not tell you how many times the kids walked the grandparents through the kiosk and redemption machine process.
4. Customer behavior is different from the arcade card system. The emotion of plunking several tokens in a ball crane was gone with a simple tap and play. And it quickly rose to the top of the gameplay, even though it was. Priced over $1.
   Simple – Revenue was up in the arcade more than 25% month over month to comparable years.
5. We had data instantly and could analyze patterns and optimize pricing tiers
   Collection Process for a route operator – The service technician actually had time to really clean and test the games, and still finish early because the laborious meter reading, ticket filling, token dumping was eliminated.
6. People seemed more satisfied to not have to deal with carrying tickets, the sound from the card readers gave them the excitement they needed.
7. In fact, all games would start without fumbling with tokens and banging on the coin door, it just worked.
8. In general – the kids and adults in the arcade just had a better time
   Redemption checkout was easy and not a pain for the location staff to deal with. They were much happier about that.
9. All in all, we learned that we had something that worked well, filled a need, and improved the player experience.  We also learned about perseverance in the face of adversity.

The journey was just beginning.

– John